Learning about languages

Chris Muise

Published: Nov 05, 2018 at 9:22 a.m.

Updated: Nov 06, 2018 at 6 a.m.

People from all walks of life gathered in the Paul O’Regan Hall at the Halifax Central Library to share their languages with one another as part of Halifax’s first Multilingual Language Fair. (Chris Muise)

Whether it’s on the bus, at the shopping centre or anywhere else you might go in HRM, we’ve all overheard someone speaking another language and wondered what they’re saying.

That might be the most common way many people interact with other languages, but it’s far from the best. On Sunday, Oct. 28, folks got the chance to learn about the languages of HRM at the first annual Halifax Multilingual Language Fair, which took place at the Halifax Central Library.

The Halifax Immigration Partnership (HIP), an interdisciplinary coalition founded in 2013 to help newcomers settle, hosted the event after realizing they had been focusing too much on immigrants learning the local languages and not enough on helping their children also maintain their native languages.

“This is the first opportunity that we’ve ever done anything like this in Halifax, to highlight all the languages that are spoken here,” says Sonja Grcic-Stuart, an advisory chair with the HIP, who says that children can start to lose their home language in as little as six months after moving to Canada. “You maintaining your own language is as important to me as going to school every day and learning in English.”

“It takes effort,” says Furcan Yousif, mother of a three-year-old daughter, Sarah, who Yousif intends to keep fluent in Arabic as well. “I went to Arabic school at the same time I was going to a French school.”

“Our goals from this school are to teach our kids our language and English culture and how we can integrate the two cultures,” says Loai Al Rafai, a Syrian refugee who founded the Maritime Syrian Academy. “It’s important to us. It’s great to know another culture ... it’s a strength.”

The fair featured cultural groups of Halifax set up at booths, where they shared books, cultural artifacts and other educational activities with interested attendees.

“We’re here to present about Gaelic culture,” says 16-year-old Abaidh (pronounced “Abby”) Hanson, who runs a group called Up With Gaelic with her 14-year-old sister, Eilidh (pronounced “Ella”). “It’s great that there’s so many different cultures here sharing all of the different parts of their culture.”

There were also multilingual story-time sessions, where guests were read stories in numerous languages by a native speaker.

Blaire Gould, director of programs and services with Mi’kmaw Kina’matnewey (MK), told a quartet of stories written in English and Mi’kmaw from an interactive app MK had developed.

“It’s to really bring awareness to the language and culture of the Mi’kmaw people,” says Gould. “It’s to introduce them ... to celebrate hearing a language.”

This sharing of languages isn’t just to satisfy intellectual curiosity, Grcic-Stuart says. There’s real-world value in being more knowledgeable of the words spoken around us, especially if we take the time to learn a few.

“You can do this if you want to,” says Grcic-Stuart, who took the time to learn how to say “hello” in every language on display at the fair. “This is what I call cultural and linguistic capital. This is valuable. If Halifax is multicultural, multilingual, multi-literate, all of a sudden we have more connections to the real world. Learning and acquiring another language opens another door. These are your doors.”

One couple who recently emigrated from Columbia, after failing to see their own culture represented at the event, have decided to invest in that capital.

“Our Latin population is growing here in Nova Scotia, so I think it’s good to join our effort and start to build an association,” says Diana Ortiz. “In Canada, people work as a community.”

The HIP saw this language fair as an opportunity to gauge local interest in language awareness. By Grcic-Stuart’s estimation, there’s plenty.

“We are overwhelmed with the response,” she says, and she assures those who missed out that there will be other opportunities like this in the future.